In The Quiet
by seductiveturnip
Summary: Sometimes they just watch each other, exchanging small smiles and unspoken statements, and it's just desperately, beautifully, blissfully quiet. He can't remember the last time he had that. She doesn't think she ever has. - ONESHOT - BUCKY/WANDA - WINTERWITCH
1. i

**i**. The team calls him _Barnes_ and they skitter around him with weary smiles and tense shoulders. The team calls him _Barnes_ and it feels just as unfamiliar and impersonal and harsh as _Soldier_ \- a gruff bark buried somewhere in the mess of his memories, an accented greeting of good morning and a steady reply

 _Good morning, soldier_

 _Ready to comply_

 _Soldier_

 _Soldier_

Most of the time, _Soldier_ feels more comfortable than _Barnes,_ but he doesn't want to say so - that would just disappoint Steve, and Steve tries so hard. He reads newspapers with him and calls him _Bucky_ and tries to remind him of their childhood but it all washes over him, like a dream he can't remember upon waking.

Wanda, though. The girl. The pale shadow in the corner.

She looks at him and she _knows._

She looks at him and sees right through him, and he wonders how that could be when he doesn't even know who he is.


	2. ii

**ii**. He catches her eye in the field one day. That's really the extent of their overall interaction. Of course, he's seen her around the compound, but Wanda's quiet like him, and they don't really let her go out, whereas he prefers to walk around New York City, aimlessly, as if trying to find something, anything, to give him some kind of meaning.

But when they do cross each other, they catalogue looks, exchange glances, watch each other with this semblance of earnestness that neither knew they were still capable of. Sometimes they'll smile once in a while, but he always feels awkward doing it: he doesn't remember how these conversations - or lack of thereof - are supposed to go. Bucky Barnes was all manners and boyish charm, but then, he's not really Bucky Barnes anymore.

He knows about her, her power, her abilities, but he can't say he's ever felt her sifting through his mind. Of course, he probably wouldn't know - he knows so little about not only her but the extent of her powers. She could have scrambled his brains and he'd never know the difference, but her eyes are kind and her scarlet dances softly and somehow he doubts she would ever have intruded as such. Besides, there seems somehow more than just knowingness whenever he turns to her and catches her already looking. Sympathy. No. Empathy. _Understanding_.

So he catches her eye in the field one day, and she's standing on a building out of the action as she usually is, manipulating from the outskirts. She's watching him with something like curiosity.

He turns his gaze away.


	3. iii

**iii**. She finds him hunched over a bowl of cereal at three in the morning one night.

 _Can't sleep?_ She asks lightly, sliding opposite him, and he shakes his head. He doesn't elaborate more than that, but she recognizes that look in his eyes, as she has for the past few months. It's a look she's seen so many times in her own reflection. Worn, darkened, stamped with black and blue.

They sit there in comfortable silence, until finally, _Wanda, do you ever go inside my head?_

 _Not if I can help it. I try not to intrude with anyone. It's just... some thoughts are louder than others. And yours... they howl._

He sucks in a breath sharply, thinks about this a few seconds. _I don't mind if you look. If it's easier to listen in than... block it out. You can. I just..._ He chuckles dryly. _My memories scare me. I wouldn't wish to inflict them upon anyone. It might... it's not... I don't sleep, It's... I can't... it's so dark in there and I don't know if maybe you're right to not want to..._

She smiles sadly, _Do not think me frail, Sergeant Barnes. I grew up in a third world country ripped apart by civil war, you forget_ , and he swallows hard. The Winter Soldier was in Sokovia, and he remembers. He remembers everything. And Sokovia was probably the most brutal, violent place he'd ever seen. A fragment flashes through his brains of small children running through the wartorn ghettos, scavenging and begging with wide, sunken eyes, offering anything for a scrap of food. Work. Possessions. Their bodies. He feels ill to think that was how Wanda grew up. He feels ill to think of her as a HYDRA pet, just like him. He notices how her hands shake, the violence of the tremors pulsing out tiny strands of scarlet. He lays his arm out on the table - the one of flesh - so they she may see how they too tremble.

She is quiet a moment before continuing. _It's all mostly images, you know, dreamscapes. Not exact thoughts or memories or... I'm still working on that. I'm not... it's still so new to me. I don't know how to do that yet. I'm... I'm never in control. They're right, what they all say about me, out there. I'm unstable._

She looks so small right then it stirs something inside him he doesn't recognize, this fierce, protective instinct that feels so foreign to him that his eyes just fix on her, searching. Of course he knows she's beautiful, objectively. Maybe she was the type of girl he would have once asked on a date. But that was another lifetime.

 _Why are you looking at me like that?_ She mumbles, and he reminds himself to look away. It's rude to stare, a woman's voice echoes from the shadows of his mind. His mother, maybe. No. Bucky Barnes' mother.

 _Nothing. I just... know what you mean. To feel like that. Uh. Unstable._

Her mouth twitches. _Yes. I suppose you do._


	4. iv

**iv**. They mirror each other almost unconsciously. He speaks softly, as she does. She walks with her shoulders hunched, as he does. They sit beside each other, perfectly still, only moving when the other does. He starts spending more time in the compound, feeling a little more tethered. He enjoys her company. Sometimes they sit in silence, and sometimes he tells knock knock jokes and sometimes she reads him her favorite poets and sometimes, when he feels himself slipping into old protocol, she'll be awake and join him as he patrols the tower, checks for bugs, cleans the guns. The Winter Soldier has no commands, after all.  
Sometimes they just watch each other, exchanging small smiles and unspoken statements, and it's just desperately, beautifully, blissfully quiet. He can't remember the last time he had that. She doesn't think she ever has.


	5. v

**v**. Steve teased him about it once, the strange tie they shared, the way they moved in perfect synchrony, accompanied one another everywhere, sat shoulder to shoulder, two souls out of time. He shakes his head, says they're just friends, but the word feels wrong in his mouth. _Friend_. It didn't fit. She wasn't his _friend._ She wasn't exactly more, she wasn't exactly less, but she… she looked a lot like forgiveness. He could use some help with that.  
Steve didn't bring it up again, and he didn't really think about it again. Friends, more than friends, not friends… the two of them didn't fit into such moulds. They just…. _were_.


	6. vi

vi. Their late night conversations are almost routine, and she's surprised to find him one day lying on the couch, asleep, watching an old black and white film. She watches him, filled with something almost joyful to see him, calm, features unlined and unstrained and peaceful and it's so rare and so vulnerable that she almost wants to cry, but then he starts to twitch and shake and quiver, his hands curling into fists and she wakes him, shaking him. _It's not real. None of it is real. It's not real._

His eyes widen, his whole body poised for attack. _It is. It is all real._

 _No. No. You're safe. You are safe here. You are safe. They don't own you anymore._

He is quiet. _Who are you?_

She grasps his hand tightly. It takes him about an hour to come back fully, fragments reappearing fuzzily and slowly, but when it's all still just a disjointed puzzle he can't put together, all he knows is this girl who is all sincerity and softness and slim wrists, eyes filled with such concern, speaking as much as they see. _Wanda_ , he says eventually.

 _Bucky_ , she echoes.

 _I'm not him. Bucky Barnes._

 _I know._

 _He was a hero._

 _Yes._

 _I can't be._

 _I know._

Silence.

In the end, it is just a name. You may choose whichever one you wish. _You do not have to be_ the _Bucky Barnes to just be... Bucky._

 _Yes_ , he relents. He likes the way she says it. She says it without expectation. She says it like it's a gift she has given him. She says it like he deserves a name, one that does not objectify him to some... thing. She says his name like maybe it does belong him.

They remain quiet a little while longer, before she glances up, searching his face. He understands what she's saying. He doesn't object.

So she slips into his mind.

Wanda sees everything. She sees it all, in half-cast shadows and nightmarish abstractions of his mind. She sees cruelty in labcoats, heavy chains and blood, maniacal smiles and sharp teeth and pain, just pain, searing and burning and neverending and the tiny, broken animal, wounded and crying and reaching for a light, any light, any relief, _make it end please god make it stop make it sto_ p, and faces, so many faces, faces of all the people he has killed screaming and screaming and Bucky keeps shrinking and shrinking and it's all a mess, it doesn't make sense, and Wanda's trying so hard to tame them, make them go away, but she can't. She's not there yet. She relents, come back to herself, unaware that she's left her fingerprints on every memory, every corner of his mind, every stone she has thus far turned over.

Shame colours his cheeks. She doesn't say anything.

Sleep takes them both eventually. The nightmares come, scalpels and orders and electricity for him and bombs and gunfire and corpses for her, but there is something new in each of their dreams – something in their subconscious, an unseen figure, standing watchful and calm, a guardian. Lithe and graceful and kind for him and sturdy and hunched and tentative for her.  
They lie, side by side, in the light of the black and white film, not touching except for the tips of their fingers.

When the sun comes up, they're both covered in sweat, and they're both shaking and they're both terrified of having to face another day carrying around what they carry. But she's next to him and he's next to her and they understand and he asks her what she wants for breakfast.


	7. vii

**vii**. She watches from overhead, as another Winter Soldier grabs Bucky, twisting him and crushing him into the ground, over and over and over and spitting in words in a language she doesn't recognize, but she's overcome by such ferocity and fear of losing him and fear of anyone hurting him any more than he's already been hurt that she finds herself surging forward, through the city and through the people and the rest of the team and she's rolling the scarlet between her palms, pulling it and tearing as the Winter Soldier, suspended above ground, screeches in pain as she rips the very limbs from his body.

Go, he splutters, rubbing the blood and spit from his mouth. Get out of here. Get out of here now.

But he squeezes her hand roughly, eyes burning.


	8. viii

**viii**. She puts on Billie Holliday one night after dinner, and there are noises of complaint and objection but he just sits in silence, and something tight and sad twinges in his chest at the familiar croon, the trumpets, and when everyone leaves he says flatly _I used to dance to this song._ She looks at him, even if he doesn't meet her eyes, _Is that an invitation?_ It wasn't - but his lips twinge slightly and he makes his way to her and takes her hand – such a familiar gesture to them both – and takes her in his arms. He's not sure he remember how to dance and she never has, so they just hold each other, swaying gently.


	9. ix

**ix**. He loves her. He loves the way she tilts her head, he loves her self-conscious snark and the way she pulls on her sleeves, her terrible guitar playing and the way she understands. Everything about her is hesitant and gentle, her laugh is just like windchimes and he wishes she'd do it more often, and sometimes she floats away and disconnects from reality and she's so weird and she's so thrilling and he's so in love with her and he's probably always known. He just didn't realize it until now. It's not that he hides it from her – but she's his favorite thing about himself and he doesn't want to taint it by all the years had stolen from him. He doesn't tell her.


End file.
